Associated projects

QAMECS

The objective of the QAMECS project (Air Quality in the Grenoble Area: Assessment of Environment, Behaviour and Health) is to :

• Provide an up-to-date overview. Provide an updated diagnosis of the situation of the Grenoble Metro from the point of view of air quality, its health impact and the associated economic costs ;
• Carry out an ex-ante evaluation of i) the planned "breathable city" actions and ii) proposals for "effective" theoretical scenarios to inform future policy choices.  Evaluate ex-ante "planned" scenarios and different scenarios and theoretical objectives. The scenarios could be formulated on different dimensions: health, environmental levels, and emissions (for example linked to traffic restrictions). Their impact will be quantified on the dimensions of air quality, health, and economy. For theoretical targets (for example, a 10% reduction in the annual average fine particle concentration, or in the number of deaths due to pollution), measures to achieve them will be identified;
• Carry out a follow-up before/after the "breathable city" action plan. Conduct a before/after type study over the 2016-2019 period based on environmental models, measurements in the environment (including PM, EC/OC, levoglucosan, nitrogen oxides) and a health impact study.

 

QAMECS-SHS
 

The objective of the QAMECS-SHS project is to evaluate to what extent the policies implemented to improve air quality in cities modify people's perceptions and representations and can therefore modify their practices in terms of mobility or wood heating. This will make it possible, on the one hand, to evaluate existing systems and, on the other, to propose new levers to improve the fight against air pollution in urban environments.

For this, our research field will be the Grenoble agglomeration (La Métro) which, like other conurbations, has undertaken a series of measures that are part of a broader urban strategy including for example the Atmosphere Protection Plan, the Air Energy Climate Plan, as well as the "Breathable Cities in 5 Years" project of the Ministry of the Environment.

The QAMECS-SHS project is an interdisciplinary project combining sociology, behavioural psychology and economics. To address the issues, it will rely on a two-part survey, a socio-psychological telephone survey that will address the two main sources of pollution, mobility and wood heating, and a modal choice questionnaire via the Internet. It will be a question of:

• To evaluate over a long period, through a longitudinal study over nearly 10 years, the impact of air pollution control measures implemented on La Métro territory on perception, representations, knowledge levels and practices emissions from the two major sources of suspended particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), wood heating and mobility. The objective is to evaluate the extent to which it is possible to use these representations to modify individuals' behaviour.
• To analyse the determinants of modal choice, focusing on the impact on modal choices of motivations related to individual health and the environmental impacts of the transport mode. This will also make it possible to identify new levers and tools, or to improve existing tools for combating air pollution. The psychological drivers of these motivations will be analysed in particular to understand how and why intentions (to use "soft" transport, i.e. walking, cycling or public transport) are translated, or not, into behaviour.

Particular attention will be paid to the heterogeneity of the impact of these measures on perceptions, representations and practices according to social categories. On the one hand, vigilance must be paid to the possible regressive impacts of measures to improve air quality, and on the other, it has been shown that Grenoble has a social disadvantage in terms of the health impact of pollution.

The research field is concentrated in the Grenoble area, but the objective of QAMECS-SHS is that the results of the project provide recommendations in terms of developing measures to combat air pollution due to transport and wood heating at the scale of the city in general.